The Right to Keep and Bear Arms

I have to say that I'm still not satisfied with the distinction between allowing individuals to own nukes vs. butter knives.

Suppose a satellite weapon was invented that could kill only one individual at a time, but could kill millions of individuals per second. If the only question is the ability of the weapon to TARGET only those we deem worthy of death, then we would allow private individuals to own such satellite weapons.

I don't know about you, but I'm not comfortable knowing that anyone with enough money could wipe out me, my family, or my city at the press of a button on a whim. There is, then, an element of danger. In protecting one individual, we would have exposed other individuals.

Allowing someone to own an automatic weapon with slow bullets might allow one to kill only those he meant to kill, but it also gives him more power to kill more innocent people.

This satellite weapon would be the ideal form of self-defense. Am I then in favor of limiting the individuals right to protect himself? Only to the extent that the weapon gives the individual unreasonable power over the lives of others.

As to what is reasonable, we have to find the ideal situation to protect the innocent individual. That means striking a balance between private ownership of weapons for the presumably innocent to protect himself/herself from the presumably guilty, and the ability of those weapons to harm more presumably innocent people. I don't know how you can come to any other conclusion.

I'd like to explore exactly what needs to be taken into account and how we find that balance, but I would like your feedback on the fundamental philosophy first.

Post 41

Wednesday, July 2, 2008 - 7:11pm

You have just as much "right" to keep a nuke in your basement as you do to walk into your local movie theatre, and, at the climactic moment, turn on your 200 watt ghetto blaster, or pull out a megaphone and start advising everyone that pizzas are 10% off at your pizzarea down the street.

Sure, you have a right in general to defend yourself against attack. However, each incremental increase in your offensive capability imposes a risk on your neighbors. If you want to own a working bazooka in downtown Peoria, then your insurance company is going to want a sizeable premium, just in case you actually fire the thing, or there's a break-in and the local gang makes off with it, or your psychotic uncle finds it, and you - and your insurance company - get hit with $millions in damage claims.

At some point the astute insurance adjustor is surely going to be asking himself, "why does someone need a bazooka in downtown Peoria?" And at that point your premiums will likely go even more through the roof. Multiply that factor by a million or so for each magatonage your basement nuke delivers.

And, if you don't want to refund the tickets plus aggravation to hundreds of angry movie goers, approach the theater owners and buy ad time before the "coming attractions." Your "right" of freedom of speech is the right to speak on your own time, your own property, and/or to people who are interested in listening, not a right to force anyone else to pay attention to you. That's like confusing sex with rape.

Post 42

Wednesday, July 2, 2008 - 7:23pm

Dear Mr. Funk,

I completely agree with your sentiments where you say;

"... I'm still not satisfied with the distinction between allowing individuals to own nukes vs. butter knives."

And I liked your objection to "selective targeting" - as a sole criteria. Limits on the weapons range or rate of fire or number of discharges per day might be good directions in our attempts to apply moral rights to legal protections in this area. But, like I said, I don't know.

The nub of the issue, philosophically, is in resolving the apparent conflict between the absolute right that seems to be logically implied, and not limited, versus the obvious, common-sense understanding that any extreme implementation of that right would result in massive violations of rights.

In quick bullet points, these are my thoughts:

1) There aren't any such things as contradictions in reality - just some misunderstanding we need to work on.
2) "Common sense" can be (and historically has been) badly in error - and can lead to dangerous slippery slopes. We need to resolve this into properly parsed principles - that needs to be a goal.
3) But until it's resolved, we need common sense limits since private ownership of WMDs would lead mass murder on such a scale as to render the concept of rights meaningless.
4) Practically speaking, the political reality of private citizens being allowed to own WMDs is nil which just makes us look stupider when anyone claims that as a sensible direction to go.
5) We must accept that there is something, probably a contextual conflation or unnoticed ambiguous use of some term that is keeping us from resolving this in principle.
6) If we recognize and accept that we are currently ignorant of adequate guiding principles in this area, and because of the dangers mentioned in #3, Objectivists should advocate for common sense limits in legal applications... while chewing further on the theory.
7) We hurt our reputation as advocates of liberty and as practioners of reason if we are tolerant of either of the exteme positions in the Nuke vs. Butter-knife issue.

Steve

Post 43

Wednesday, July 2, 2008 - 8:49pm

Phil's post is almost too stupid to respond to, but I can't help myself, for some reason I'm fascinated by this childish fantasy world Phil comes from. Phil did you ever stop to think that a lot of people are uninsured for a whole bunch of things? Some people have been known to drive without car insurance but will still end up killing people in an automobile accident. So how do you justify the premise "high insurance premiums" would prevent someone from keeping dangerous weapons that may indiscriminately kill innocent people on their property?

Post 44

Wednesday, July 2, 2008 - 11:14pm

Jordan,

I was replying to you, but it appears that I slightly misrepresented you. I had written. "You say that the right to bear arms should fall somewhere between rifles and handguns. Why? What's wrong with rifles? In certain cases, they can be more accurate than handguns."

You had said "somewhere between rifles and fists," not "somewhere between rifles and handguns."

My apologies.

Bill

Post 45

Thursday, July 3, 2008 - 9:49am

Some factors to consider:

1. Probability of effectively stopping the perpetrator.
2. Amount of harm to the perpetrator.
4. Probability of harming others.
5. Amount of harm to others.
6. Whether less forceful but still effective technologies are
available.
7. The police's role in defending you.
8. The value of the right being protected.

Jordan

Post 46

Thursday, July 3, 2008 - 12:27pm

Jordan -- regarding these two items on your list:

"2. Amount of harm to the perpetrator.

6. Whether less forceful but still effective technologies are
available."

These items imply that the weapon will be fired. If someone is armed with an obviously deadly firearm, and they warn the intruder or assailant to stop violating their rights, and the criminal ignores that warning to cease and desist -- do you feel that the criminal's rights are being violated if the person uses that weapon after giving sufficient warning, and the warning is ignored?

How much physical harm would the criminal suffer if they heeded the warning and the weapon was not discharged? Doesn't that item on your list assume a criminal so reckless and dangerous that even the threat of deadly force can't dissuade them from wrongdoing? Are you proposing that, in the face of such a grave threat to a homeowner's life, that the homeowner should be legally required to own a non-lethal weapon so as to protect the criminal's safety?

And are you suggesting that the person whose rights are being violated has an obligation to protect the criminal by having a broad array of weaponry at hand of widely varying degrees of lethality, and a legal obligation in a stressful and dangerous situation to take the time to ponder which of these weapons is the least forceful, and be subject to imprisonment afterwards if a jury containing liberals who've never been assaulted decides that a slightly less forceful choice of weapons should have been selected?
(Edited by Jim Henshaw on 7/03, 12:39pm)

Post 47

Thursday, July 3, 2008 - 2:37pm

Hi Jim,

These items imply that the weapon will be fired.

The factors inform whether to fire (and own) some particular weapon.

If someone is armed with an obviously deadly firearm, and they warn the intruder or assailant to stop violating their rights, and the criminal ignores that warning to cease and desist -- do you feel that the criminal's rights are being violated if the person uses that weapon after giving sufficient warning, and the warning is ignored?

It depends, much on those factors I mentioned. If for example the perpetrator is just committing, say, petty theft, then using deadly force against him would violate his rights. If for other example you could just close a gate rather than shoot him, then you'd be violating his rights by shooting him. Do you believe the perpertrator loses all rights upon initiating his crime?

And are you suggesting that the person whose rights are being violated has an obligation to protect the criminal by having a broad array of weaponry at hand of widely varying degrees of lethality, and a legal obligation in a stressful and dangerous situation to take the time to ponder which of these weapons is the least forceful, and be subject to imprisonment afterwards if a jury containing liberals who've never been assaulted decides that a slightly less forceful choice of weapons should have been selected?

I think this combines the other questions in your thread, so I'll address just this one. "Reasonableness" is key to what counts as proper self defense. It would be unreasonable for an intended victim to thumb through his list of weapons for the one with just the right amount of force for his particular situation. There should be flexibility here. But the goal is still to use no more force than is necessary to secure your rights. If the intended victim had hourse and hours to choose and prep for the attack, and if he had every weapon under the sun at his disposal, I would suggest he would have a far better chance to hit that goal, and his reasonable options would be far fewer.

If someone's use of force was unreasonably excessive in some situation -- like a bazooka used against a shoplifter -- then the the bazookaer should be accountable to the shoplifter for whatever damage occurred beyond that which would have otherwise been reasonable.

Jordan

Post 48

Thursday, July 3, 2008 - 3:51pm

It depends, much on those factors I mentioned. If for example the perpetrator is just committing, say, petty theft, then using deadly force against him would violate his rights. If for other example you could just close a gate rather than shoot him, then you'd be violating his rights by shooting him. Do you believe the perpertrator loses all rights upon initiating his crime

Yes. It is just such attitudes as this 'grading of rights' that has those who have been attacked being punished for kicking and making sure the attacker is DOWN, not to be up and attacking again....... when one has deliberately violated another's rights, that one has abrogated its own......

(Edited by robert malcom on 7/03, 3:53pm)

Post 49

Thursday, July 3, 2008 - 4:55pm

Jordan,

Your first concern should be self-protection and only secondarily, the perpetrator's rights. If you need to kill him to ensure self-protection, then you kill him. If you start second guessing yourself as to whether or not you're using the "proper" amount of force, you could compromise your own self-defense.

- Bill

Post 50

Thursday, July 3, 2008 - 5:34pm

Hi Jordan,

I asked this:

If someone is armed with an obviously deadly firearm, and they warn the intruder or assailant to stop violating their rights, and the criminal ignores that warning to cease and desist -- do you feel that the criminal's rights are being violated if the person uses that weapon after giving sufficient warning, and the warning is ignored?

To which you replied:

"It depends, much on those factors I mentioned. If for example the perpetrator is just committing, say, petty theft, then using deadly force against him would violate his rights. If for other example you could just close a gate rather than shoot him, then you'd be violating his rights by shooting him. Do you believe the perpertrator loses all rights upon initiating his crime?"

You've just described pretty much the state of the law as it currently exists -- the notion that someone can rob or try to kill you, and if, after showing the criminal you're armed and warning them that you are prepared to use deadly force if they don't surrender, you can be considered a criminal if they ignore your warning and you do what you said you'd do. Essentially, the law says you have to let the intruder back you into a corner where there's no possibility of retreat before you have to try to stop them, and then still use the least possible force.

This is an absurd notion of justice. I have three children. If I ask them to do a chore, and tell them what the consequences will be if they don't do it, and then they ignore me, what do you think will happen if I back down and plead and bargain with them to please, please do what I've asked, after I've already demonstrated that I make demands that I won't enforce? The kids will run wild. They will do whatever the hell they want, and if this goes on for years and years, I will have succeeded in raising sociopathic monsters who think they can do whatever they please without regard for other's rights. Needless to say, that's not how things work in my household. You may be surprised to hear that I have very polite, well-mannered kids, and receive compliments from parents when my kids visit and play with their kids.

Here's my take on it: if someone is trying to rob or kill me or my family, and I show them I'm armed with a deadly weapon, and order them to surrender, and warn them that I am prepared to fire at them -- if they ignore this clear and unambiguous statement that I intend to defend my rights with deadly force, I should be able to use my discretion to use whatever degree of force I deem necessary to stop them. Maybe I might choose to close a gate; maybe I might choose to fire a warning shot into the ground by their feet; maybe I'll choose to discharge it into them -- all of these should be legal. Now, if they surrendered, and then I shot them anyway, than I would have committed a criminal offense. If they break the law, the only right they should retain is the right to not be physically harmed if they surrender and allow themselves to get handed over to lawful authorities.

You should never point a weapon at a criminal, threaten to use it, and then prove that you're won't really use the bloody thing, because they're likely to take the weapon from you and use it on you.

Post 51

Thursday, July 3, 2008 - 5:45pm

Phil,

Are you seriously saying that high insurance premiums will protect us from people with nukes? Really?

you have a right in general to defend yourself against attack.

Ok good. This almost gets us somewhere. Now consider the following hypothetical: there is an intruder in your house armed with a gun. You get your gun and tell him to drop his weapon or you'll shoot. Instead, you observe him slowly unlock the safety and aim the weapon at you. Do you need to wait until he attacks? Or do you have a right to protect yourself from real and imminent threats to your life? I think most of us would say that we have a right to protect ourselves in the face of such life-threatening danger.

This is what I was trying to point out with my satellite of death, and it works for a nuke too. I only went with the satellite because it has the ability to target a single person or multiple people without collateral damage. (I wanted to show that saying selective targeting is the only issue is intellectually convenient, but unrealistic) CONSIDER: Someone in your neighborhood owns a satellite weapon. He might be sadistic, crazy, or just too stupid to use it safely. Is this man not a real and imminent threat to your life? Are you going to wait til he shoots you with the satellite before you act?

How can you really suggest a standard that a) allows someone to own my satellite weapon for defense and b) allows us to kill him for owning it?

Steve,

I applaud you for your willingness to address the key issue and avoid tangents. I'm a little bit frustrated with our inability thus far to address the key concern, or form any conclusion that makes sense.

The nub of the issue, philosophically, is in resolving the apparent conflict between the absolute right that seems to be logically implied, and not limited, versus the obvious, common-sense understanding that any extreme implementation of that right would result in massive violations of rights.

Well said. I disagree, though, that there is a conflict between an absolute right and common sense. It seems to me, as I have discussed above, that we have more of a conflict between an "absolute right of self-protection" and the "absolute right of self-protection." Barring any (realistic and rational) disagreement, I would like to go from there.

Post 52

Thursday, July 3, 2008 - 7:41pm

"Are you seriously saying that high insurance premiums will protect us from people with nukes? Really?"

Yes, I am. However, I'm speaking in the context of an anarcho-capitalist society - although it could work in a limited state society almost as well, where part of the job of the title registrar for your property would be to ensure that you were properly insured or bonded to cover whatever risks you created for your neighbors. Failure to demonstrate that in a timely manner could mean revocation of your title, on the assumption that you were passing on the costs to your neighbors, just like you will lose your car if you attempt to drive in California without insurance or equivalent bonding. You simply don't have the right to impose your risks on other people.

This would mean that instead of the typically somewhat arbitrary and politicized "zoning" - often real-estate interest driven - the objectively verifiable costs would remain with the property owner, who would either have to work out a deal with the neighbors up front - say for a noisy business that keeps people awake at night - or pay enough in premiums that the insurance carrier could still make a profit by providing insurance. The worry that someone might set up a fireworks factory next door in a suburban neighborhood without zoning would be mooted by the fact that the fireworks manufacturer would have to pay extraordinary premiums to cover the risk. It just wouldn't make business sense. They would be much better off safely surrounded by miles of desert in the boonies.

Conrad Shnieker http://www.athenalab.com/The_Supreme_Scientific_Method.htm#_Toc127049213, co-inventor of the scanning, tunneling array chip and one of the dozen or so researchers who developed the concept of nanotechnology in the '70's, introduced me to the idea of risk control as a means of preventing crime in general sometime in the early '80's at one of the monthly parties that Anthony L. Hargis used to put on at his gold depository in Costa Mesa, CA. (These parties were a kind of Mecca for local libertarian luminaries for several years.)

To establish a general context, the issue arose in a discussion with Conrad concerning the Fermi Paradox. Conrad pointed out that the capability for offensive force was increasing exponentially faster than for defensive force, and that this provided one plausible answer to Fermi. "Where the heck is everyone?" Easy - they all killed themselves off soon after developing our current level of technology. We discussed how someone using recombinent DNA could engineer a binary virus that could wipe out everyone with the wrong genetic signature - or, if we think about the ALF nut jobs, simply all humans. One example that occurred to me at the time was creating a hybrid of the common cold and ebola.

Since then, in recent years, a research lab in Africa announced that they had indeed created exactly that hybrid - for the purpose of trying to invent a vaccine for Ebola, of course, but still scary as hell. http://www.vetscite.org/publish/items/001415/index.html Meanwhile, doing recombinent DNA on the level necessary to do really bad stuff has dropped in cost to the point that millions of individuals throughout the world could afford to do it in their garage as I write.

Conrad then postulated that the only real defense against such attacks would be total surveillance. Since I knew that he was an anarcho-capitalist, I assumed that he did not mean by the state. He confirmed that and pointed out that the state would not be reliable enough. It suffers from the inefficiencies and vulnerabilities to corruption that any coercive monopoly is subject to. Who guards the guards? All it takes is one universal plague. No, you need something better than that if you want humanity to survive long term.

So, what was his anarchist solution? He assumed that everyone would have to get insurance on their property in order to maintain a valid title, I'm sure. And, the insurance companies would base their premiums on risk. If you decide to build your home next to a big river that floods occasionally - or below sea level in the path of hurricanes, then your premiums for flood insurance are going to be very high, so much so that most homeowners will forgoe them altogether, and hope that the Feds or someone will bail them out, which ain't gonna happen in either an objectivist limited state or under anarcho-capitalism.

But the insurance companies are in competition with each other as well. So naturally they will seek cost effective solutions to matching premiums to risk. One thing that Conrad suggested was that - as inplementation of his surveillance society - the insurance companies would offer rewards for catching people who, for whatever reason, were concealing hazards that would otherwise bump up the rates.

Thus, if the market were such that people attempted this kind of fraud frequently, then there would arrise a class of freelance bounty hunters, who would use all manner of devious tracking of resources, etc., to locate people to rat on. The bounty would be paid out of a default premium that you signed, as in, if I try to screw the insurance company and get caught, then I agree to pay some huge sum to compensate them for all the trouble it took to catch me. And, your regular premiums would go up, of course, reflecting your bad behavior.

Thus, keeping any kind of battlefield-strength offensive gear in your basement in the burbs would be rather expensive in insurance premiums - or penalties when you got caught concealing the fact - and for a nuke would be more than even a Bill Gates could afford.

In fact, nukes are rather easy to trace, and both the internal security agents of the insurance companies and the free-lance bounty hunter agencies would be keeping a rather close eye on anything remotely approaching nuclear or dirty bomb capability, the transport of materiel, the information passed on from the suppliers, who could be hit with a serious "aid and abet" premium for their part in irresponsibly selling fissionable material - and could also provide the info in order to get a cut in the bounty money.

I want to re-emphasize that this solution, while presented originally in the context of a proposed anarchist society, in which everything would be privatized, would also work in a limited state. Or, you can depend upon the competence of your local gendarmes - as in http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4176/is_20071031/ai_n21075633 .

Post 53

Friday, July 4, 2008 - 11:11am

Hi Jim,

Are you suggesting that your unheeded lethal warning allows you to do whatever you want -- sky is the limit -- to the bad guy? This would be an unprincipled, hence unjust, approach to the problem.

What if the bad guy is simply an unarmed petty theft or unarmed trespasser who refuses to heed your warning? It's okay to grenade him? What if he honestly mistakenly thinks his conduct is lawful? What if it's a kid?

For what it's worth, under common law the use of deadly force is legal only if the threat of force is reasonably necessary to protect oneself against unlawful, serious, imminent bodily injury. I'm comfortable with this. It allows you to shoot, say, the armed perpetrator who breaks into your house, or the guy with the knife who's trying to mug you.

To be sure, the law does not compel you to make idle threats. And there's little merit in making a lethal threat to engage in unethical conduct, then following through on it just because you said you would.

Jordan

Post 54

Friday, July 4, 2008 - 10:58pm

Hi Joseph,

You said,

I disagree, though, that there is a conflict between an absolute right and common sense.

We don't have any disagreement - not in that area. Did you notice in my statement the use of the words "apparent" and "seems to be logically implied"? I was trying to say that there is no real conflict just something we don't yet understand. But I suspect, from the rest of your statement, where you said,

we have more of a conflict between an "absolute right of self-protection" and the "absolute right of self-protection."

that you want to discuss the right to defend one's self versus the right to own a weapon that could kill thousands of people and couldn't be defended against - under the claim of right to defend ones self.

Note that I said "right to defend" and NOT "right to self-protection." I'm stressing the distinction between taking a defensive action at the time it is needed versus owning something that is intended to be used for defense. Use versus Ownership.

That might be a good start to dealing with the question in your post:

How can you really suggest a standard that a) allows someone to own my satellite weapon for defense and b) allows us to kill him for owning it?

First I would want to ensure the discussion didn't loose track of the distinctions between legal rights and ethical rights. Just to make sure an accidental ambiguity didn't creep into the discussion. One distinction is that ethical rights are absolute and never conflict, as I understand them. We derived them from our philosophical understanding of human nature and do so for the purpose of establishing the boundaries of actions between people. Whereas legal rights are our best attempts to define the specific conditions that merit calling an action a violation of a legal right. And that legal right is the legal codification of the ethical right.

For an example, we can look at some of the legal descriptions of "valid" acts of self-defense. First, we note that the ethical right to self-defense is absolute. We don't need permission from a law. But the purpose of the law is to provide the most rational environment that best reflects that ethical right. Hence we have legal descriptions with words like "imminent", "justifiable level of force", "reasonable expectation of significant harm in the absence of defensive force", etc. This law, if it is formulated intelligently and without hidden agendas (two VERY important considerations) isn't ever attempting to limit ones self-defence, but rather to stop someone from claiming an action was justified by their ethical right, if, in fact, it wasn't. And there is the added purpose to publish a single understanding of the boundaries in specific area - so we know in advance what legal consequences apply. The law is obviously going to be messier than ethics, even when the ethics are well understood and agreed upon (which is not true in our world).

So, having said that, I'd say that I would have the legal and ethical right to USE the hypothetical satellite under certain circumstances. But should I have the legal right to OWN such a weapon? I say "No."

Imagine the situation where my home is invaded by a thug who threatens me in my own living room with a handgun and says give me your money or I'll kill you". I choose to touch the satellite button and he is instantly vaporized and no property or other person is in the least effected. Now, police arrive and arrest me and the DA brings me to court on two related charges: Murder and possesion of an illegal weapon (we'll assume a law was passed that made it illegal to own these satellites just shortly after they were invented.)

With rational laws, my claim to self-defense would exonerate me from the murder charge (and in a rational society I wouldn't never have been so charged). I maintain that a rational society would write the law to make ownership of WMDs illegal and that I would and should be convicted on that charge. (I'm using the WMD acronym because it's handy - the kook or insane person could be pushing the satellite button as fast as his finger could move, chuckling as hundreds of people disappeared with every hour of button-pushing.)

So, back to the nub of the issue. What is the ethical right that is violated by the legal prohibition of owning WMDs? It isn't your right to defend yourself, since that doesn't require the satellite. But how can you justify a law that prohibits an action that hasn't violated any rights (i.e., owning it before the button is pushed)? That is the question - and this is as far as I've gone - which doesn't really seem to have moved things along much further.

I still come back to saying common sense demands a law that keeps kooks from having nukes. We pay a price in the loss of innocent lives when a kook takes the wrong action with a car, with a handgun, with a rifle - and we know that, and we see it as a part of the price of liberty. It is like protecting the right of Nazis to speak their trash. We know that hearing a Nazi advocate their ideas can render harm because some tiny number of people will be tempted or swayed or confused. We know that, and we accept that as part of the price of liberty. But the price is beyond comprehension when you talk about rendering an entire city of people into a smoking crater.

Post 55

Saturday, July 5, 2008 - 12:13am

Hi Robert,

I agree with what you were saying in post #48:

It is just such attitudes as this 'grading of rights' that has those who have been attacked being punished for kicking and making sure the attacker is DOWN, not to be up and attacking again....... when one has deliberately violated another's rights, that one has abrogated its own......

But there is a distinction between legal rights and ethical rights that can create confusions. The law creates legal rights - artificial rights if you will, in attempting to define actions as they relate to the right under question.

The law tries to say, in general, what conditions would exist in a future situation that would make, for example, killing another person an act of self-defense as opposed to murder.

For example: The law on the use of deadly force in self-defense usually requires a reasonable expectation of harm if one hadn't acted in defense. Imagine that two women, each in separate, unrelated events kill a man. Each says, "I was defending myself from a violent rape attempt." It is reasonable of the law to ask, "What in this situation would lead a reasonable person to that belief?" One woman answers, "all men are rapists and he was looking at me." The other says, "The man I shot was naked, had an erection, and was trying to tear my clothes off." Big difference.

So when the law describes conditions to define the boundaries of a criminal act versus a justified act, I would not call those grading of rights. I want to know what the purpose of a given law is. And I want to know where a descriptive element of a law (or the way it is applied) results in injustice, so as to make a correction.

Ethical rights are easy by comparison. It is hard to define the full range of possible future actions in general terms so as to implement a just set of laws. And laws do more than codify ethical rights, they also contribute greatly to the social climate. Laws can be just, yet excessively harsh. Let's say that someone, with full understanding and consent, signs an agreement that contains a clause saying that any contractual violation on their part gives the other party the right to take their life. This is no violation of justice. No rights have been abrogated.

But if that became a common practice I'd live elsewhere, not over worries about being at risk, but because that is a society that hates life. Just look at the harsh laws that are voluntarily agreed to within the community of Islamic fundamentalists regarding contracts of marriage - "I will be your husband and give you a home and support you and you will be my wife and agree to be faithful or be stoned to death."

The added complexity of law gives it this additional range (compared to ethics) - too harsh or too lenient - and both are to be avoided.

Post 56

Sunday, July 6, 2008 - 3:07pm

I'm not sure what the Common Law position is on contracts that permit one to be executed or on contracts to be enslaved and similar other contracts that typically only occur in cases where someone has stumbled into a situation, or was tricked into it by a third party, and suddenly some other person has the de facto power of life or death over one..

Anybody know that one?

I'm thinking about whether I would want that to be in the General Social Contract - a clause specifically denying certain classes of contract enforcability...

Post 57

Sunday, July 6, 2008 - 7:15pm

Phil, I believe Rothbard addressed that in either The Libertarian Manifesto, or The Ethics of Liberty.

Post 58

Monday, July 7, 2008 - 10:15am

Phil,

Under common law, contracts for execution or enslavement are considered unconscionable and so will not be enforceable. Also, contracts entered into under fraud or duress are generally not enforceable.

But to be sure, common law does not (overtly) care how lopsided a contract is.

Jordan

Post 59

Tuesday, July 8, 2008 - 6:17pm